Opinion – Sandro Macedo: Open letter for the end of VAR in Brazil

My six-year-old daughter occasionally likes to fiddle with her cell phone for recreational purposes. But his lack of tech skills comes at a price. I’ve already missed calls and messages, I’ve seen an app that I didn’t want appear and an app I needed disappearing.

VAR in Brazil reminds me a lot of my daughter. The problem is not the technology, but the fact that we don’t know how to use the toy.

It’s a harsh realization, because I’ve always been a VAR supporter. Before I thought the problem was our pettiness. We bought cheaper equipment when we could have invested in a more Premier League-style kit – we really like the Premier League VAR in this window, the speed, accuracy and little interference. But I come to the conclusion that my column neighbor PVC recently killed the riddle: VAR helps refereeing that is already good.

No wonder no Brazilian VAR team has been selected for the Cup.

Here we don’t know how to draw the line, choose the “frame”, assign strength, what a support arm is, interpret a hand touch; we don’t know that in the “replay” every fault is murder, that pulling unbalances; and, most importantly, we were unable to resolve any single offside move in less than a minute. My pelada had far fewer mistakes than any Brazilian game.

It’s so much “we don’t know” that the immediate solution might be to give up VAR for a while. The wealthy CBF could use VAR-funds to professionalize refereeing once and for all.

Such electronic help did not even help to reduce the time of refereeing conversations at football round tables. On the contrary, it is now possible to discuss in the programs the referee of the field, the one in the video room and the relationship between the two.

There is a problem every week, but the one on Sunday (19) was the virtual icing on the cake. Internacional vs Botafogo, in Beira-Rio. Ball hits the chest and then the Botafogo defender’s hand (no penalty). Judge is called to VAR, who interprets the play as a penalty and then expels the poor Botafogo player.

The epic turn, and it was really epic, for Botafogo only happened because an even more epic mistake happened, which made the team go from 2 to 0 with one less player to end in an exciting 2 to 3.

The refereeing video assistant has improved many sports. In some it is called a “challenge” because it is the coach himself or the player who triggers it, when he does not agree with some marking. Roger Federer, who doesn’t complain about anything in life, questioned the electronic challenge in his beginnings in tennis, but the entire circuit quickly realized that mistakes were minimized.

The best VAR is in rugby, where the referee uses a microphone and everyone listens to what he says in the video booth. And even though the players have more muscle than I have pounds, no athlete is bothering the referee. Everyone respects the decision. This rugby gang is polite.

For these and others, I ask for the momentary end of VAR. When we’re mature in football, we’ll be able to give it another try—and when my daughter is mature, she’ll get a cell phone…probably two Cups from now.

Update – Round 38

After a third of Brazilians, we have another victim: Eduardo Baptista, from the lantern Juventude. To replace him they resurrected Umberto Louzer, who had died in round 6 (!), when he was in Atlético-GO. Thus, the survivors’ account (counting Dorival Jr.) is now: Brazilians 4 x 7 Foreigners. It’s Brazil approaching another 7 to 1.